Proposed Implementation

Implementation

Proposed End Users

Pinesorb’s main goal is to address the issue of oil leakages and spills in coastal areas without the causation of second-degree environmental harm. Conventional solutions to such oil crises employed by the modern world, such as polypropylene, which is a plastic-like sheet that can absorb oil, are unable to be recycled in an environmentally safe manner, and instead need to be disposed of by burning or buried underground in landfills. This means that in the process of trying to solve an environmentally damaging issue, the world indirectly creates another. Although there are eco-friendly alternatives that have been created in the past, these initiatives were impeded by their cost, time consumption, and scarcity. For instance, peat moss has been used by multiple eco-friendly oil sorbent products as an alternative to conventional polypropylene. Peat moss, however, is not an easily-found plant in many parts of the world, and also requires a lot of time and care to harvest, not to mention the cost of distribution.

Hence, eco-friendly oil sorbents have been neglected by the oil spill industry for decades. On the other hand, Pinesorb requires a mere 12-week long processing stage to create large batches of eco-friendly oil sorbents that are made of pine trees, one of the most abundant tree species on the planet. Our team’s objective is to not only address the environmental issues of oil spill recovery but also, create a product that can truly be useful in the real world. With the low cost and easy accessibility of Pinesorb, the industry can once again open its eyes to eco-friendly alternatives.

Pinesorb can be used in countless different ways, due to the versatility of its absorbent properties. Pinesorb’s main target area is coastal and marine control. This includes large-scale oil spills and minor oil spills from ships. Although large-scale oil spills do not occur as often as smaller-scale crises, they often excrete extreme amounts of oil into the ocean.

For instance, in the 2007 Taean Oil Spill, the entire coast turned black from leaked crude oil. This also means that the excessive amount of oil requires a large amount of oil sorbent for cleanup. Pinesorb is a perfect way to absorb excess oil and recycle it in an environmentally harmless manner. Additionally, with hundreds of thousands of ships operating in South Korea alone, the amount of oil leakage and clean-up method from bilge water is a critical issue. Pine Sorb could also serve as a solution for this issue by serving as a cost-efficient and eco-friendly alternative for the commonly used dish-soap method.

Coastal & Marine Control

Implementation into Real World
  • Oil spills commonly occur globally, also including the US water
  • Thousands of oil spills occur each year, with most being small in size
  • Large oil spills over 10,000 barrels also occur
  • Since the 1969 oil well blowout in Santa Barbara, California, there has been at least 44 oil spills over 10,000 barrels or 420,000 gallons into the US Waters

    • Mainly, our product Pinesorb could be implemented to cope with small and large scale oil-spill problems that happen relatively commonly around the world. Moreover, after being used to absorb oil spills in powdered form, pinesorb could be recycled and changed into pellet form. With this recycling process, Pinesorb could serve as an sustainable and eco-friendly alternative to cope with oil spills in replacement of the currently utilized methods.

    Bilge Water

    Implementation into Real World
  • Number of Ship registered in South Korea: 3,477 ships registered in Korea as of 2021
  • Increase in Number of Ships Globally over the past years: 49,445 ships in world fleet in 2016 to 53,973 ships in world fleet in 2021

    • Our product Pine Sorb would be able to be utilized to clean oil from bilge water. When visiting Tongyeong, our team observed how the leakage of bilge water is a significant problem to the environment.

    Bilge water, by definition, is a liquid formed as a byproduct of engines, and is a mixture of seawater with engine oil, lubricants, and cleaning solvents. This mixture often accumulates in the bottom most cavity of a vessel, and vessels that do not weigh over 100 tons do not have bilge water treatment equipments on board. Therefore, most vessels of such size rely on a propulsion system that includes a inboard engine that is connected to an external screw propeller. This system is operated by an external propeller that is turned by an internal engine, allowing seawater to seep along the transmission shaft and accumulate in the bottom cavity. Similarly, accumulated bilge water also seeps out along the same transmission shaft, leaving an oil film behind the vessel. Since leaving an oil film behind the vessel incurs a fine and a temporary embargo, fisherman commonly spray droplets of household dish soap into any formed oil film to avoid getting caught, worsening the environmental impact of oil releasement in marine environments.

    Pine Sorb could be a eco-friendly and reasonable alternative to this problem by being used as a effective process to clean bilge water. Considering the number of ships registered in South Korea and the increase in number of ships globally, the usage of Pine Sorb to clean up the amount of oil in bilge water would be crucial.

    Safety

    In generating our product Pinesorb, there are several safety measures that have to be considered. First, caution is necessary when handling microorganisms in the gene modification process of pine trees. In order to improve the brown-rot fungi process in a more efficient, quick way, microorganisms have to be utilized to speed up the processing pathway. Therefore, safety cautions are important in detailing this process. Second, a bacteria removal process is necessary so that it would be equipped to remove any bacteria from the hardware. However, since our product Pinesorb is heat-treated with a high temperature of 200 ℃, the safety problems concerning our project are projected to not be extreme nor problematic.

    References

    1) Itopf. “Tanker Spill Statistics 2021.” ITOPF, ITOPF, 13 Jan. 2022, https://www.itopf.org/news-events/news/tanker-spill-statistics-2021/#:~:text=The%20total%20volume%20of%20oil,in%20the%20one%20large%20incident.

    2) N. Sönnichsen, and Jun 21. “Global Average Oil Spills per Decade 2021.” Statista, 21 June 2022, https://www.statista.com/statistics/671539/average-number-of-oil-spills-per-decade/.

    3) Press, The Associated. “The California Oil Spill Was about 25,000 Gallons - One-Fifth What Officials Feared.” NPR, NPR, 14 Oct. 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/10/14/1046164240/california-oil-spill-25-000-gallons.

    4) Roberts. (2021, September 03). Visualization for World merchant fleet data (2016 -2021). Retrieved from http://infomaritime.eu/index.php/2021/08/22/top-15-shipowning-countries/

    5) KOSIS, kosis.kr/statHtml/statHtml.do?orgId=146&tblId=DT_MLTM_1338.